What are you playing?

[DaveW]

Dave: when you get it, we shall have to try out the co-op. Apparently one person plays a spotter and the other the sniper. It sounds pretty neat.

After playing it for a bit I might take you up on that, it's a very nice game so far and I feel obliged to support a game developer willing to try something a little different . I love the kill cams with the X-Ray vision, too, they make getting decent shots very satisfying.

[bobby 55]

Over the week-end I fired up Freelancer to try the Discovery 4.86 mod that's currently in beta. It's similar to 4.85 but with many improvements. Not that much in game play, but new weapons, ships, commodities and systems. There's also some cool re-texturing happening also. I think it's really structured for multiplayer, though I'm happy enough in the open single play rendition. There's no story mode as it conflicts with what the development team has changed apparently.

[shadowblade34]

Not playung anything over ghe next two weeks due to exams, then it'll be all out with games. Haven't played a PC game for 2 months, doesn't feel good. Only gane I've played is Street Fighter 4 on Xbox for about 5 minutes.
As soon as I jump back into PC gaming, I'm gonna play ARMA 2 with this DayZ mod that I've bedn hearing so much about. Sounds absolutely amazing but unfortunately I'm an ARMA 12 noob, so I need to learn the basics first.

Also, if anyone know-is there supposed to be a DLC that gives you better textues in ARMA 2? That's what I've heard and I've only got Combined Operations

[bobby 55]

I tried to play some Mad Moxxi in Borderlands. I got through a few waves but it was a runtime error blitz. I've tried several of the fixes but it's still occurring, just less frequently.

Added much later: Un-installing, downloading, and installing all the C++ redistributables seems to have fixed the problem. That's the regular game anyhow, I might revisit Moxxis when I've got the energy.

[kdawg88]

Stalker: Call of Pripyat. Great game, not much else to say since I've just started playing it. I like the way that conversations are written rather than spoken, it's much better than having to skip through voice files to get the information you want. That said, in a game like DX with more long-run linearity, it's better to have voice files since the content tends to be of a higher quality.


Also made the playoffs of my division in a Quake Live tournament.

[Jonas]

That said, in a game like DX with more long-run linearity, it's better to have voice files since the content tends to be of a higher quality.

I think it's more that Deus Ex is well written by professional authors, whereas STALKER is blandly written and then translated by people with a very loose grasp of the English language.

[shadowblade34]

I was playing this game were you find a person with arachnophobia, and link them a picture of a spider

Sorry Jonas, I was being a dick, call me whenever you're in London so you can give me that kick to the balls

[bobby 55]

Also made the playoffs of my division in a Quake Live tournament.

Onya kdawg.

[kdawg88]

That said, in a game like DX with more long-run linearity, it's better to have voice files since the content tends to be of a higher quality.

I think it's more that Deus Ex is well written by professional authors, whereas STALKER is blandly written and then translated by people with a very loose grasp of the English language.

Yeah, that's partly what I meant. (I'm starting to confuse myself here) Given that the time and ability of writers and voice-actors is limited, I think that written text is a better way of maximising the quality/depth/detail of conversations than speech is, in a game that has the scope of STALKER. Deus Ex, for example, has a lesser scope (less characters/settings), so you can put the same writers/voice-actors to work on voice-acted conversations which fit the game and are of a decent quality.

The difference between Morrowind and Oblivion is probably the best example of this. The jump to fully voice-acted convos in Oblivion was a really bad idea IMO. Despite the voice-acting decent, conversations with generic NPCs lack the depth and uniqueness of those in Morrowind, almost to the point where the convo is meaningless.

In other words, if a game is to have NPC conversations of a reasonable depth and quality, then making the NPCs voice-acted should not get in the way of this.

[kdawg88]

Also made the playoffs of my division in a Quake Live tournament.

Onya kdawg.

Thanks. It's a great game, you should try it if you haven't already.

[Massaca]

Primarily been playing Touhou Eiyashou Imperishable Night [PC] and Ninja Gaiden 2 [360] for the past many weeks.

Had been trying to beat Lunatic difficulty on Imperishable Night but I'm struggling badly to even pass stage 5 before running out of continues and I actually need to clear the whole game without using any at all (6 stages) which is super hard (for me). Will have to practice a lot more.
Was also shown an "Ultra" patch which pretty much just produces 1.5x more bullets but makes a hell of a difference for most of it. Sadly makes some Spell Cards (essentially a boss attack pattern) impossible to do without being hit. Managed to do one of the harder Spell Cards but it took me 264 attempts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCIcNjdwkjI
It doesn't look hard but trust me, playing it and actually doing it right is hard, especially if you don't know how to handle the red streams (I knew exactly what I was doing for all attempts but the red circles proved really hard, especially on the third set of streams).
Anyway, I adore this game greatly (and the whole series for that matter but this one's my fav)


In Ninja Gaiden 2 I'm doing a Master Ninja, no life bar upgrades, no items, no Ninpo (like a quick powerful magic attack) run using only one weapon: the Dual Katanas. And I've been recording the whole thing. It's going slowly but well. After playing Ninja Gaiden 3, NG2 feels and plays as incredibly well as ever. 1400 hours and counting since release in 2008, on a single player action game. My fav game of all time.


I also started and finished Vanquish [360] but didn't really like it much.


Oh, and a month-ish ago I started American McGee's Alice [360] again and have been playing it very slowly. In the second part of the Labyrinth at the moment so not much more left. Just really wanting to play Alice: Madness Returns again now but need to finish AMA first.

[Jonas]

Given that the time and ability of writers and voice-actors is limited, I think that written text is a better way of maximising the quality/depth/detail of conversations than speech is, in a game that has the scope of STALKER. Deus Ex, for example, has a lesser scope (less characters/settings), so you can put the same writers/voice-actors to work on voice-acted conversations which fit the game and are of a decent quality.

The difference between Morrowind and Oblivion is probably the best example of this. The jump to fully voice-acted convos in Oblivion was a really bad idea IMO. Despite the voice-acting decent, conversations with generic NPCs lack the depth and uniqueness of those in Morrowind, almost to the point where the convo is meaningless.

In other words, if a game is to have NPC conversations of a reasonable depth and quality, then making the NPCs voice-acted should not get in the way of this.

Well I agree with your conclusion (VO should not get in the way of depth and quality) but I don't agree with how you got there. It's perfectly possible to make a huge game with a giant script and still have it fully voice-acted, in fact I wouldn't be surprised at all if Deus Ex has a significantly larger script than any of the STALKER games. You make it sound like Deus Ex is this straight-up shooter with a small voice script, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

If you want to look at Oblivion, why not look at Dragon Age as a counter-point: that's another huge RPG with loads of voiced dialogue, but it's infinitely deeper and better written than Oblivion's.

If you're not willing to spend enough money on voice recording, then yeah - stick to text. But it's a budget problem, not a creative one.

[Hassat Hunter]

*cough* The Old Republic *cough*

Still think text is better. Like Planescape: Torment. Much money left that way to spend in other ways on the game. Since you can't deny it costed a lot of bucks... and still many repeatal lines had to be used.

Also, Bethesda was willing to spend a lot of money on VO, but on probably the worst possible way (getting a few famous voice-actors for small parts for waay too much cash).

I do like that most people in S.T.A.L.K.E.R (the original, not sure about sequels) talk Ukrainian. That does add a lot to the mood...

[Jonas]

Since you can't deny it costed a lot of bucks... and still many repeatal lines had to be used.

Heh, speaking of bad writing...

Also, Bethesda was willing to spend a lot of money on VO, but on probably the worst possible way (getting a few famous voice-actors for small parts for waay too much cash).

Bethesda's writers aren't very good. That's their problem.

Sure there's more money left over for everything else if you don't have VO. There's also more money left over if you don't have any art. In fact, hmm... programmers are typically the ones who get paid the most. Why not just cut the fucking gameplay out of the game and make a movie instead? SO MUCH MONEY LEFT OVER!

[gamer0004]

Jonas, you're right and wrong. On the one hand, you point to the very essential trade-offs that have to be made. Every element of a game costs money and choices must be made. On the other hand you are saying that it's perfectly possible to have a fully voiced game which is still good. This is certainly true, but it's still a trade off. Given a game budget, the gameplay, narrative and graphics can be improved by using text only instead of VA. The question is, is that worth it? That depends on the game really, like others have argued. The kind of game determines both the cost of voice acting and the alternative uses of the resources otherwise spend on VA. In open world RPGs I prefer many characters with many lines of text rather than few characters with few lines of text. Deus Ex, however, wouldn't have been a better game by being an open world RPG (one alternative use of resources) and due to its focus on linear storytelling is far better for its VA. In that case, spending money on VA is a better investment than spending it on other elements of production.
Not that this is very different from what you're arguing, but the way you're arguing isn't very consistent.

I actually don't think anybody disagrees here really. I think we can all agree on the statement that voice acting can be a good investment, depending on the kind of game you're making, where in other cases it can be better to do without it to spend the resources on other game elements.